How Markets Fail by John Cassidy - Book review

How Markets Fail

The Logic of Economic Calamities

By: John Cassidy

Published: December 1, 2009
Format: Hardcover, 256 pages
ISBN 9780670068609
Publisher: Viking Canada/Penguin Group (Canada)










"Once a bubble begins, free markets can no longer be relied on to allocate resources sensibly or efficiently", writes New Yorker journalist John Cassidy in his incisive and compelling book How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities. The author explores why markets enter into bubble phases, and the logic of rational irrationality that drives people to continue investing in the bubble economy, even if mainstream economic theory, and the idea of the rational market, would suggest that to not be the case.

John Cassidy describes what he considers the myths surrounding free market economics, which he refers to as utopian economics. The author describes how misreading the classic Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, following the ideological teachings of Milton Friedman, and an adherence to the concept of a market that behaves in a rational manner, were all contributors to the bubble economy. John Cassidy points out that bubble creation and the eventual bursting of those bubbles are inevitable results of human decision making that are not recognized in classical economic theory. The author presents his concept of real world economics as an alternative. His revised economic thinking draws heavily on behavioral sciences, game theory, and discarding the idea that people behave rationally in their decision making process. He calls his real world economics rational irrationality that follow a very logical and predictable path.



John Cassidy (photo left) recognizes that Adam Smith did not extend his famous analogy of the invisible hand to the banking community. Instead, Smith understood that the banks would behave in a rationally irrational way if they had no oversight. As John Cassidy makes clear in the book, the banks had little choice but to enter the irrational market activity of the housing bubble. To not make risky loans, and then sell those loans into the derivative market, was to fall behind the competition and to lose stock value. As a result, it was rational for banks, also for their borrowers, to take excessive risk. The same sort of rational irrationality also operates in the health care field, rendering classical market economic thinking irrelevant in that sector, according to the author.

For me, the power of the book is the persuasive case that John Cassidy presents for the causes and inevitable collapse of the housing and stock market bubbles. The author outlines what he considers severe shortcomings in free market theory with clarity and in easy to understand language. Indeed, the entire book is thoughtful and convincing in its argument for a new paradigm in economic thinking. John Cassidy discusses in detail how supporters of free market thinking were taken by surprise by the growth and size of the housing bubble. The author shows how classical theory doesn't even allow for the possibility of bubbles, despite obvious evidence to the contrary. John Cassidy's real world economic theory is drawn from what he considers to be the way people actually behave when confronted by the uncertainty of the market. The author makes a strong case that instead of behaving rationally, as many economists believe, people act rationally in an irrational way. Real life decisions are made through emotion and not rational analysis, as believed previously.

I highly recommend the brilliant and must read book How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities by John Cassidy, to anyone seeking a deeper understanding into the true nature of the causes and expansion of economic bubbles. Far from being an anti-market diatribe, the book is about understanding how markets really work, how people really make investment decisions, and why choices that appear to be irrational on the surface are actually rational and follow their own logic, within the context of the bubble economy.

Read the important and very convincing book How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities by John Cassidy, and you will never listen to an economist or consider mainstream economics in the same way again. The author invites the readers to open their minds to an alternative way of looking at the economy, and he does so in an entertaining and enlightening format. The end result is a treatise on the way the economy really works, backed up with modern economic thought, application of game theory, and by leading edge behavioral science.

Tags: How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities, MJohn Cassidy, real world economics, rational irrationality, market bubbles, economics book reviews.

Mark Oristano: A Sportscaster’s Guide to Watching Football - Author interview

Thirty-five year football broadcaster with the National Football League teams, the Dallas Cowboys and the Houston Oilers, and with NFL Films, Mark Oristano, author of the insightful and engaging book on understanding the sport of football A Sportscaster's Guide to Watching Football: Decoding America's Favorite Game was kind enough to take the time to answer a few questions about his book.

Mark Oristano shares a bit of his inside knowledge of football, including a few tips on the most important thing to watch for in a game.

Thanks to Mark Oristano for his time and for his interesting and informative answers. As always, he scored a touchdown for the fans and the game of football itself.

What was the background to writing this book A Sportscaster's Guide to Watching Football: Decoding America's Favorite Game?

Mark Oristano: I found that as a former NFL sportscaster, I watched the game differently from my “civilian” friends, and when I explained something to one of them, they’d always want to know more. So, I started to write an article for an online magazine, and it blossomed into a full book.

Who was this book written to help with their understanding of football?

Mark Oristano: People who are not big fans, but want to feel more a part of the action on Sunday, or Saturday, or whenever. The ones who ask a question during the game, but are always told to hush up because it’s too complicated.

Can a long time fan of the game gain some valuable insights into the sport through your book as well?

Mark Oristano: It depends on how well he/she understands strategy. I don’t get into the subtle difference between Cover 2 and Tampa 2, but I lay down some brain work. Also, lots of great NFL stories from my days in the league.

The book is mainly about the National Football League. Is the book also helpful to people wanting to understand college and high school football as well?

Mark Oristano: Sure. Football is football. Everything just happens at a much faster pace in the NFL. A lot of this can be learned quickly by watching good high school games first, because the speed of that game is easier on the untrained eye.



Mark Oristano (photo left)

Football is a very complex sport, with many actions taking place on every play. What are some of the key events that casual fans should watch most carefully?

Mark Oristano: Basically, that the key players to watch on offense are the center and the two guards… NOT THE QUARTERBACK. Those three offensive linemen will tell you where the ball is going on almost every play. Once you learn to watch them at the snap, you’ll be much better at picking up the full intent of each play quickly.

What do you find to be the most confusing aspects of the game for casual fans to understand?

Mark Oristano: “Why are all those big guys running around like crazy and running into each other?” Really, just being able to parse the strategy from what looks like so much random mayhem.

You use examples in the book of great players, coaches and teams to help describe the game. Did you find that real life players and their play helped to illustrate your ideas for new fans of the game?

Mark Oristano: Nobody is better than the best. You won’t find many running backs who can run like Earl Campbell, or quarterbacks who can throw like Troy Aikman, so if you want to learn, they are who you watch. In today’s game, this would mean watching guys like Drew Brees, Tom Brady, Hines Ward, Troy Polamalu, etc… watch the best at each position… see why they do what they do.

You included a few fun insider phrases for the novice fan to use when watching the game with friends. Can simply learning and understanding this insider language enhance anyone’s enjoyment of the sport?

Mark Oristano: Sure… football is a matter of jargon, just like anything else, and as a wise man once said, jargon is an attempt to hide things from the outsider. Once you know what it means when the TV analyst says the QB was “looking weakside for the fade but the safety came over the top,” you know what to watch and you know what it’s all about.

Watching a game live is much different from watching the game on television. What important differences should a casual fan observe when watching a game at the stadium that they may not see on television?

Mark Oristano: When you watch a game live, you can see all 22 players at once, something you rarely get on TV. You can see how deep the safeties are playing on defense, and how the cornerbacks are covering the receivers. You get a much greater sense, basically, of what the defense is doing, since TV tends to show mostly the offense.

What is your own fondest memory of watching and broadcasting the great game of football for so many years?

Mark Oristano: So many. Hard to pick one. Monday night in November, 1978, doing the Oilers-Dolphins game. Each time one team scored, the other scored. Back and forth. 60,000 fans going nuts in the Astrodome. Earl Campbell ran for 199 yards and 4 touchdowns, the last one an 81-yarder to put the game away late in the 4th quarter.

What is next for Mark Oristano?

Mark Oristano: A shower. Then, more work on my next book, which has nothing at all to do with sports. It’s about medicine, but I can’t go into any more detail right now.

***********

My book review of A Sportscaster's Guide to Watching Football: Decoding America's Favorite Game by Mark Oristano.

Tags: A Sportscaster's Guide to Watching Football: Decoding America's Favorite Game, Mark Oristano, National Football League, college football, high school football, sports author interviews.

A Sportscaster’s Guide to Watching Football by Mark Oristano - Book review

A Sportscaster's Guide to Watching Football

Decoding America's Favorite Game

By: Mark Oristano

Published: August 1, 2009
Format: Paperback, 160 pages
ISBN-10: 0982160119
ISBN-13: 978-0982160114
Publisher: Synergy Books










"Football is an amazing, endlessly fascinating game, and the good news is it's not nearly as difficult as it might seem to become a knowledgeable fan", writes thirty-five year football broadcaster with the Dallas Cowboys, Houston Oilers, and NFL Films, Mark Oristano, in his insightful and engaging book on understanding the sport of football A Sportscaster's Guide to Watching Football: Decoding America's Favorite Game. The author presents his guide to deciphering the intricacies of football for the novice or casual fan in a friendly, folksy style that doesn't insult the intelligence of the reader, while also sharing inside stories of professional football to entice the veteran gridiron watcher.

Mark Oristano understands the sport of football, and especially the professional National Football League, from the inside. His three decades of working with the finest coaches, players, and officials in the sport gives him a unique perspective, from which to coach the everyday football fan about the game. The author recognizes that football is a complex game, complete with an intricate set of rules, and its own language and jargon. Mark Oristano demystifies the hieroglyphic type playbook, the on field activity that appears at first glance to be random, and the thinking behind the action that makes the game so endlessly exciting for millions of fans. The author shares the basics of the seeming multitude of plays, and explains in everyday language the reasons for the motion of the players. Through it all, Mark Oristano's love of the game and its personalities sparkles through the pages.



Mark Oristano (photo left) breaks down the offense, defense, and special teams into plain no nonsense terms, removing the mystery for their appearance on the field. He describes, not only the purpose of each of the three teams, but also the role and type of player that is part of each of these groups. The author illustrates his explanations with examples of great players and coaches, past and present, to share a deeper understanding of the concepts. He also shares valuable lessons on the different plays of the game, from coin toss and kickoff to the two minute warning. Mark Oristano even provides a wonderful break in the book to represent half-time, prior to continuing his always entertaining discussion of the joys of watching football.

For me, the power of the book is the ease with which Mark Oristano presents his guide to understanding football. With his long experience in the broadcast booth, it would have been easy to take football knowledge for granted. Instead, the author describes the sport in a friendly, accessible manner that is not condescending or simplistic. The lively descriptions of the game, plays, and players are interspersed with intriguing and humorous anecdotes involving some of the biggest names in football history. This personalizing of the sport provides interest for the seasoned football fan, as well as introducing the novice viewer to the wonderful personalities who made football their passion. Indeed, Mark Oristano's deep love of football is seen on every page and in every delightful story he conveys to the reader. The book even includes a valuable section on the rules of the game that will provide even long time fans with some critical information.

I highly recommend the personable and fan friendly book A Sportscaster's Guide to Watching Football: Decoding America's Favorite Game by Mark Oristano, to anyone seeking a reader friendly primer on the rules, plays, and players of the great game of football. The author shares his decades of wisdom and experience with novice and experienced gridiron fan alike, with a light hearted and engaging style, that turns learning the complexities of the sport into as much fun as viewing the game itself.

Read the fun and enlightening book A Sportscaster's Guide to Watching Football: Decoding America's Favorite Game by Mark Oristano, and share in the fun at your next football watching event. Whether viewing a televised professional or college game, or attending a game at your local high school, your knowledge and appreciation of the sport will be enhanced greatly by reading this book. It's a definite touchdown of a book.

Tags: A Sportscaster's Guide to Watching Football: Decoding America's Favorite Game, Mark Oristano, National Football League, college football, high school football, sports book reviews.

The Buyout of America by Josh Kosman - Book review

The Buyout of America

How Private Equity Will Cause the Next Great Credit Crisis

By: Josh Kosman

Published: November 12, 2009
Format: Hardcover, 288 pages
ISBN: 9781591842859
Publisher: Portfolio/Penguin Group (USA)






"Private-equity firms buy businesses through leveraged buyouts, which means the majority of the money for the buyout comes from loading the company down with debt". writes financial industry journalist Josh Kosman, in his explosive and compelling book The Buyout of America: How Private Equity Will Cause the Next Great Credit Crisis. The author describes how private-equity owned firms are collapsing under heavy, unsustainable debt loads created for their acquisition, and that the current economic downturn will force many of these companies into bankruptcy.

Josh Kosman has been studying the the private-equity industry for over a decade, following the leveraged buyouts of companies, and their increasing debt loads. He describes private-equity owned businesses as being operated with only short term profits in mind. He provides many examples of how private-equity takeovers have resulted in massive layoffs to lower, higher consumer prices to increase short term revenues, and lower levels of customer service with little regard for the the future of the acquired companies. Josh Kosman points out that the time horizon for private-equity owners is less than five years, from purchase to sale. As a result, short term profit generation is given priority over the long term health of the company. The author views this very short term strategy to be detrimental, and even destructive for the heavily indebted businesses.



Josh Kosman (photo left) recognizes the danger of massive company debt loads, especially in times of economic recession, and tightened credit markets. The heavy and often increased debt loads placed on the companies, according to the author, is a ticking time bomb that will explode into widespread corporate bankruptcies within the next few years, putting perhaps ten percent of the entire American labor force out of work. He considers the prospects for private-equity owned firms in the United Kingdom and Europe to be equally dire. For Josh Kosman, the danger of massive private-equity owned business failures is very real, and poses a potential economic disaster for the economy. Since leveraged buyouts were enabled through tax loopholes that allowed interest on the acquisition loans to be tax deductible, and that the major private-equity firms are very well connected politically, Josh Kosman doesn't forecast a legislative solution.

For me, the power of the book is how Josh Kosman explains how and why many private-equity owned firms may be forced into bankruptcy between now and 2012. He also describes, in detail the business management practices of the private-equity firms, and how their short term corporate strategic thinking has contributed to this growing crisis. The author forecasts that half of all private-equity controlled firms face collapse under their heavy debt loads by 2012. As a result, Josh Kosman does see one possibility to prevent this financial meltdown. The turnaround help many arrive in the form of additional capital from the cash rich private-equity firms themselves. Facing huge numbers of bankruptcies, of their controlled firms, the private-equity companies may choose to provide cash infusions and longer term management strategies for their holdings. With the credit markets tightening up, and the possibility of sale of the debt laden companies dismal, a new form of management remains one way out of the impending financial disaster.

I highly recommend the very important and must read book The Buyout of America: How Private Equity Will Cause the Next Great Credit Crisis by Josh Kosman, to anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the operations and management practices of private-equity companies. Whether you agree with the author's analysis or not, the book provides a warning of an economically devastating collapse of private-equity owned firms, unless there is a change in policy by their parent companies. The economic consequences of half of the private-equity owned businesses in the United States would be a disaster for the economy as a whole, and the employees and families of the collapsed companies in particular.

Read the landmark and controversial book The Buyout of America: How Private Equity Will Cause the Next Great Credit Crisis by Josh Kosman, and learn about private-equity capital, and its effect on the companies acquired in debt funded leveraged buyouts. This book will help build a greater understanding of the problems created by corporate debt loads, and provide impetus for ideas to solve this looming economic disaster, before it becomes the next great credit crisis.

Tags: The Buyout of America: How Private Equity Will Cause the Next Great Credit Crisis, Josh Kosman, corporate debt crisis, business book reviews.

Sean Kinney: Acronis - Backup & Recovery Software - Interview

Sean Kinney, Vice President of Cloud Services at Acronis was kind enough to take the time to answer some questions about backup and recovery, information security, cloud computing, and online and offline backup protection.

Thanks to Sean Kinney from Acronis for his very informative answers. Thanks as well to Norman Birnbach, President of Birnbach Communications, Inc. for facilitating this interview and for his generous input into formulating the interview questions.

What exactly do you mean by backup and recovery and why should it be important to everyone in business?

Sean Kinney: Backup and recovery is the IT term for backing up and protecting your business critical information in the event that something goes wrong – either you have a hardware failure, data corruption, accidental deletion, theft or disaster--- and being able to recover those systems or assets after a disaster.

There are many ways to implement a company backup and recovery strategy but they essentially come down to: How much is your down time costing your organization, how important is it to recover your systems and data, how fast do you need to recover and can you afford to lose any of your data.

What's the difference to users of online backup and off-premise backup?

Sean Kinney: Online backup is a subset of off-premise backup. Off-premise backup is any copy of your information that is stored at another location, away from the primary business address.

For years, businesses shipped hundreds of tapes in boxes on trucks to other locations. Unfortunately, tape, like an old cassette tape, is prone to failure and being unreadable when the business actually needs to access the information on the tape.

Online backup is a similar process, but it transmits the data over a secure internet connection from your primary business address to another remote location and the information is stored on highly reliable disk drives. Online backup data is encrypted so it cannot be accessed by others.

Many tape based off-premise backups are not encrypted and when the truck has an accident or a tape gets lost, the company has to disclose this potential identity exposure to its customers.

What are the choices companies can make about how to back up their systems?

Sean Kinney: Businesses have a few options and usually implement multiple protection schemes depending on the application and its importance:

(A) Data Replication – They can replicate their data to another machine and have it ready and waiting at all times. This machine can either be nearby in the data center or at another location altogether. When something bad happens, they switch their systems to the secondary copy and are up and running. This is the quickest resumption of business and the most expensive. Think about what would happen if the New York Stock Exchange shut down even for a few seconds? They use remote replication. This is a costly solution that requires duplicate server systems to be maintained.

(B) Local backup – users can have additional copies of their information at their primary location on portable drives, disc, or hard drives. Recovery can be fast. But if there is a problem at the primary location, this local backup may be affected too. Example, in the event of a flood, both the primary and backup could be affected.

(C) Offsite backup – users can have additional copies of their information at a remote location. They ship their data physically to another location (the old way) or securely over the internet or dedicated bandwidth connection. This protects users from theft or a disaster. Recovery time can be longer due to the distance.

Businesses should define their needs and then implement a combination of A, B and C. Most businesses combine both local and offsite data protection.



Sean Kinney (photo left)

We've heard the term business continuity quite a bit, and of course, disaster recovery. But can you tell us a little bit more about these concepts, and how technology is evolving to better address the challenges of crises, natural disasters, system failures, virus attacks and the like?

Sean Kinney: Business Continuity refers to those activities performed daily to maintain service, consistency, and recoverability. The foundation of Business Continuity are the policies, guidelines, standards, and procedures implemented by an organization.
Business continuity is the activity performed by an organization to ensure that critical business functions will be available to customers, suppliers, regulators, and other entities that must have access to those functions.

These activities include many daily chores such as project management, system backups, change control, and help desk. Business Continuity is not something implemented at the time of a disaster.

Business continuity is sometimes confused with disaster recovery, but they are separate entities.

Disaster recovery is the process an organization needs to go through to recover a system, data, or combination of the two.

Is backup and recovery the same thing as security and antivirus?

Sean Kinney: No – they are different because they protect users from different things. Backup and recovery protects the data from intended and unintended incidents. Security and anti-virus programs protect the data from malicious attacks, intrusions and cyberthefts.

We've heard a lot about cloud computing and some vendors say that having online backup is more important or better than local backup. What are your thoughts on using the cloud (what is the cloud, anyway) and is one form of backup better than the other?

Sean Kinney: Cloud computing is the ability to access raw computing resources, CPU and storage on demand, remotely. It is like electricity, you pay for what you use and you expect it to always be there when you need it. Online backup is more than cloud computing, it is a cloud service. Online backup is a software application that works in the cloud, combining both compute resources and software functionality.

For local vs. online backup - each has its advantages. The user should ideally have both. Local backup provides for a fast recovery, so it helps with you need to recover an entire system, including the operating system. Online backup has the advantage that it protects you against theft and disaster. An added benefit it that you never need to worry about upgrades or hardware compatibility. Your online service vendor takes care of everything. If you can only choose one, you are looking for simplicity and can accept a potential slower recovery time, then yes, online backup is the way to go.

Can you give some customer scenarios where backup and recovery contributes to business productivity?

Sean Kinney: When data is corrupt or inaccessible, business productivity stops. What would happen if your Outlook was malfunctioning, your online storefront was unavailable to customers or your customer support system was not functioning? With a backup and recovery process, this downtime could be reduced to minutes instead of hours or days.

To give you a scenario:

A business has their CRM software on an aging Windows server. Since this is critical server for the business, the IT manager has been backing up every night and any time the data is drastically changed.

The hard drive starts to clunk and hiss.

Luckily, he heard the disk making noises the day before and ordered a replacement disk. After the next backup, he’ll change the disk out and use the Acronis boot media to boot into the Acronis loader and restore the backup image onto the new hard drive.

If he hadn’t heard the hiss and clunks of the hard drive and the drive did fail, every minute without that system with the CRM software installed effects the business.

Using Acronis’ Universal Restore, the IT manager could take the last good backup and deploy the image to a different hardware, thus restoring the system in a few minutes.

Without backups, then this could have been a complete disaster for the business and resulted in hours, days or weeks to get the mission critical system back up.

What's the Return on Investment (ROI) of backup and recovery products?

Sean Kinney: IT professionals and salespeople have been trying to calculate this number for decades, usually to justify large hardware and software purchases. It is a calculation of lost revenue, employee productivity and customer satisfaction per minute or per hour against the cost of the software and the people to manage the backup process.



What are some best practices you have learned by using your own backup and recovery products every day?

Sean Kinney: Best practice is to start with the business requirement and needs first, then consider the technology solution. For example, can you afford to have your systems unavailable for: 1 minute, 1 hour or 1 day? Once you determine how quickly you need to recover, then you can spend the appropriate amount on the backup and recovery process. One size does not fit all within a business. Some applications can only be down for a few seconds before impacting business, while other less critical ones can be often for 1 day or more.

Next – build a consistent, automated process for your backup and recovery. Backups should occur at a minimum of once per day.

Finally, test the recovery function and the person executing the recovery. Don’t wait until you need to restore your systems to test them. Firemen practice for when there is a real fire, you should do the same.

For companies seriously considering backup and recovery solutions, what are the three key things they should look for?

Sean Kinney: You want flexibility, which I define as the ability to have local and online backups from the same application. It also means having a backup schedule that does not impact your primary business operations. Keep it simple and all in one application or service. For example, you may want local backups of your servers and online backups for your remote or traveling employees. You should be able to manage everything from one application. Your business requirements will evolve over time, make sure your backup system can evolve with you.

For online services, make sure you choose a known company. They have your information, like your financial institution protects your assets, make sure you know who they are and how long they have been in business. Data encryption is critical, if they don’t have it, you should not buy it.

Finally, Make sure the complexity, level of functionality and ultimately cost, match their needs and size of business. A 10 person company needs a much simpler solution than a 100,000 multi-national.

How expensive is it to use backup and recovery software?

Sean Kinney: There is no simple answer here. It depends on the size of the business and the relative cost of reducing downtime.

Who is the ideal customer to use backup and recovery software?

Sean Kinney: Business runs on information. If you lose or cannot access your information, you are or will be out of business. Every business needs data protection and backup and recovery. It is the ultimate horizontal application across industries, like payroll is.

What are the trends you see for backup and recovery in 2010? Are there any surprising trends this year that were unexpected in 2009?

Sean Kinney: Trends in 2010: With bandwidth becoming less expensive and faster combined with an increased business comfort using online services in general, I expect the adoption of online backup to accelerate. This is both in replacement of traditional offsite tape implementations and net-new customers adopting backup and recovery for the first time.

For 2009, it still surprises and scares me how many businesses are unaware of the need for backup and recovery and how many are one system failure away from going out of business.

What is next for Acronis in 2010?

Sean Kinney: Traditionally, Acronis has been a software company. Our expertise and differentiations in the marketplace is in data protection and disaster recovery software. We are now offering this functionality as a cloud service model. Customers want choice in how they consume software functionality – either as a traditional software application or as an online cloud service, Acronis will give it to them.

*********
Acronis is a leading provider of onsite and offsite backup, disaster recovery and security solutions. Its patented disk imaging and management technology enables corporations and individuals to protect digital assets in physical and virtual environments. With Acronis' backup, recovery, server consolidation and virtualization migration software, users protect their digital information, maintain business continuity and reduce downtime. Acronis software is sold in more than 180 countries and available in 13 languages. For additional information, please visit www.acronis.com/ Follow Acronis on Twitter: @acronis.

Tags: Sean Kinney, Acronis, backup and recovery software, interviews

Nilofer Merchant: The New How - Blog Business Success Radio

Listen to Wayne Hurlbert on Blog Talk Radio



Founder and CEO of Rubicon Consulting, leading strategist, and author of the groundbreaking and revolutionary book The New How: Creating Business Solutions Through Collaborative Strategy Nilofer Merchant redefines the way companies create strategies and win new markets. She understands the importance of business strategy needs to be revised and turned upside down. She shares how to include employees in the collaborative strategy creation process, to get them engaged and motivated to implement the strategy effectively. The recognition that strategy and execution are intertwined, is critical to developing a strategy, and to putting it into action effectively.

Nilofer Merchant is my internet radio show guest on Blog Business Success; hosted live on BlogTalkRadio.

The show airs live on Thursday, March 11, at 8:00 pm Eastern Time; 5:00 pm Pacific Time.

Founder and CEO of Rubicon Consulting, leading strategist, and author of the groundbreaking and revolutionary book The New How: Creating Business Solutions Through Collaborative Strategy Nilofer Merchant redefines the way companies create strategies and win new markets. You will learn:

* Why corporate strategy fails in the planning and implementation process

* How to identify systemic problems and air sandwiches

* How to engage all employees in strategic planning and application

* How to become a strategic problem solving organizational leader



Nilofer Merchant (photo left) is the CEO of Rubicon Consulting, and is a sought after global high-tech industry thought leader and trusted strategic advisor for companies such as Adobe, Symantec and VMWare. As Rubicon’s CEO, she has built a distinguished team of fellow strategists, who collaborate with a wide range of Silicon Valley executives at client firms such as Autodesk, Hewlett-Packard, Pinnacle, Openwave, SAP, Symantec and others.

Rubicon’s proprietary methodology continuously delivers significant material results to clients, driving revenue growth, market share-price and profits. This approach resulted in an additional $28 million in profit over 6 months for one industry leader.

Merchant founded Rubicon in 1999 after gaining fifteen years of operational experience in key leadership positions at notable technology firms such as Apple, Autodesk, and GoLive (later acquired by Adobe). The experience she gained in pricing, product management, the channel, sales, marketing and revenue generation prepared her for the interdisciplinary deep listening and precision questioning that are at the heart of Rubicon’s work today.

Through her many successes (and some losses), Nilofer has honed her multidisciplinary approach for assessing a business situation clearly, applying critical wisdom, and defining a strategic direction. Her ability to put business history in context enables her to discern the right future moves. Her writing and ideation abilities have led to syndication with major business publishing entities. At conferences, the energetic, approachable and pragmatic keynote speaking style helps people connect to her vision whether their role is that of a board member, grad student, an engineer, marketer, or a business leader.

Nilofer holds an M.B.A. from Santa Clara University, a B.S. in Economics from University of San Francisco, and is an Interaction Associates-certified Instructor of Facilitative Leadership.

Nilofer contributes to her local church’s strategy and stewardship plans, and has held the Chair of Community Fundraising position as a Board Member of the Cupertino YMCA. Early on, she was a Governor-appointee to the California Community College Board of Trustees — a position she held for an unusually long 3-year term. Nilofer and her husband enjoy the challenge of integrating the complexities of their respective high tech careers and personal interests with the demands of parenting.

My book review of The New How: Creating Business Solutions Through Collaborative Strategy by Nilofer Merchant.

Listen live on Thursday at 8:00 pm Eastern, 5:00 pm Pacific time.



If you miss this very informative show, it will be available for free download as a podcast for iPod, iTunes, and MP3 players; or play it right on your computer. To download this, or any other of my guest interviews, go to the Blog Business Success host page and click on Archived Segments. Once there, click on the podcast icon at the end of the episode description, to download the show free of charge for your listening enjoyment. You can also subscribe to the show feed.



To call in questions for my guest, the number is: (347) 996-5832

Let's talk with Founder and CEO of Rubicon Consulting, leading strategist, and author of the groundbreaking and revolutionary book The New How: Creating Business Solutions Through Collaborative Strategy Nilofer Merchant as she redefines the way companies create strategies and win new markets. She understands the importance of business strategy needs to be revised and turned upside down. She shares how to include employees in the collaborative strategy creation process, to get them engaged and motivated to implement the strategy effectively. The recognition that strategy and execution are intertwined, is critical to developing a strategy, and to putting it into action effectively on Blog Business Success Radio.

Tags: The New How: Creating Business Solutions Through Collaborative Strategy, Nilofer Merchant, collaborative strategic planning, Blog Business Success, Blog Talk Radio.

The New How by Nilofer Merchant - Book review

The New How

Creating Business Solutions Through Collaborative Strategy

By: Nilofer Merchant

Published: December 2009
Format: Hardcover, 288 pages
ISBN: 978-0-596-15625-1
Publisher: O'Reilly Media







"Watching a failed strategy rip through a company is akin to watching a powerful hurricane hit land and devastate everything in its path", writes CEO of Rubicon Consulting and strategist Nilofer Merchant in her groundbreaking and game changing book The New How: Creating Business Solutions Through Collaborative Strategy. The author describes eloquently the problems associated with current corporate strategy creation, and presents a powerful and effective collaborative format for formulating and implementing strategy.

Nilofer Merchant recognizes that many companies have built in structural problems that cause their strategy formulation efforts to fail. Very often companies experience group think in the boardroom, a failure to distinguish strategy from tactics, and a lack of engagement of employees at different levels of the organization. These systemic problems not only lead to misguided or wrongheaded strategy, but fail in the implementation process as well. The disconnect between the often isolated elite members of the strategy group, and the rank and file employees who will put the strategy into action, very often predisposes the strategy to failure. While these shortcomings in the strategic development process may be obvious to outside observers, those inside the company may be in denial or seeking scapegoats, and applying other counterproductive activities.



Nilofer Merchant (photo left) understands there is a need within the corporate world for an entirely fresh approach to formulating and executing strategy. The author proposes a collaborate effort between the top management people and other employees at various levels of the organization. The recognition of the intertwined nature of creating and implementing strategy is a critical element of Nilofer Merchant's recommendation. More than platitudes, and idealistic concepts, the author presents a series of practical and easy to apply techniques for forming a more company wide strategy formulation process. In place of the usual blame being placed on various aspects of either the failed strategy or its allegedly improper implementation, Nilofer Merchant moves toward co-creation and joint implementation. This new and powerful system is both more effective but ensures buy in and engagement of all employees and stakeholders.

For me, the power of the book is how Nilofer Merchant recognizes the flaws with current strategy creation and implementation processes, and provides a powerful and doable alternative for building and employing more effective strategies. The author presents a very practical step by step system to accommodate collaborative strategic planning is effective and that processes are established to ensure smooth application in the marketplace. Nilofer Merchant combines the crucial elements of understanding organizational behavior, building a complete process, while remaining true to core corporate values. Instead of simply suggesting the theoretical value and importance of collaboration, the author demonstrates how to integrate co-creation into the entire strategic process from conception to marketplace. The key insight that employees who are part of the strategy development will also be committed its effective application makes this a leading book on the subject of strategy.

I highly recommend the important and must read book The New How: Creating Business Solutions Through Collaborative Strategy by Nilofer Merchant, to anyone seeking a revolutionary and real world technique for more effective strategic planning and implementation. The book will change the way that corporations approach the idea of strategic thinking, from one of a top down exclusive system, to one of a collaborative and inclusive process.

Read the essential and destined to be classic book The New How: Creating Business Solutions Through Collaborative Strategy by Nilofer Merchant, and transform your corporate strategic planning process from one of systemic exclusion and high probability of failure, to one of collaborative thinking that engages employees. The success rate of co-created strategic processes is much higher, and ensures a more profitable company that solves more problems, along with developing more engaged and productive employees.

Tags: The New How: Creating Business Solutions Through Collaborative Strategy, Nilofer Merchant, collaborative strategic planning, business book reviews.